One statement I’ve seen over and over on these forums and elsewhere are proposals for “easy” fixes and overarching assumptions about how long implementation for a variety of changes “should” take.

The reality is, game development is a hugely iterative and time-consuming process, with many people involved along the way. Design takes time, Coding takes time, art takes time, QA takes time: you name it. There are also multiple steps in the pipeline for each and every proposed change and bug fix, no matter how minor, and what issues are being worked on in what order and by who can and do change as new matters arise. Sometimes extra testing is also needed for bugs that come back broken and need to be retested, because we didn't want them to go live with a bad fix.

While there may indeed be a list of known issues and bugs that run alongside some patches, for every one you are aware of, there can be dozens or hundreds being worked on behind-the-scenes that you likely never be aware of. We do things just as quickly as we can, but even then, it’s a process that takes time.

Poll: Do You Participate in Public Test Realms?
Public Test Realms are a crucial part of patches. More testers usually means better results. Do you participate?

Public Test Realms are a very valuable tool for our development teams. They allow players to test out the latest game changes before they go live and share their feedback, which in turn helps us squash more bugs and ensure that the patch we release is of the highest quality possible.

Patch 1.0.7 is currrently available for testing on the PTR, so for this week's poll we want to know what you think about the Public Test Realm process. Do you enjoy getting the opportunity to play through content that isn't yet available? Do you prefer to wait until the patch is live? Have you ever participated in a PTR? Let us know!

Why Demonic Essences Aren't Orange
We like the idea of the the Legendary ground effect being reserved for Legendaries and Set items. Otherwise, we feel it would be a bit emotionally draining to see the effect but discover that instead of getting a Legendary item, you only got a crafting material. (This is actually why we chose to make it a Rare item rather than a Legendary item.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The Achievements That Are Still Bugged
I just wanted to jump in really quickly to let you guys know that the issues with these achievements are definitely on our radar. We’re currently working on bug fixes for some of them, and we’ll let you know just as soon as they're ready for primetime. We know that many of you are eager to complete these challenging achievements, but they won’t be ready for the initial 1.0.7 PTR build we have coming out, and we don't have a current ETA for when the fixes will be implemented. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Proc Coefficient
Thanks for taking the time to write this up. We agree that there’s not a lot of visibility in the game into how proc coefficients work and integrate with item affixes, and we’ve discussed possible ways to improve that. However, I wouldn’t say that they should simply be removed from the game. Proc builds with proper gear can be pretty awesome, but (as the OP noted) for balancing reasons it’s very important to have a scaling proc coefficient. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Archon InfernoFriday: First Impressions on DuelingArchon InfernoFriday brings us a small preview of dueling straight from the PTR, alongside his personal thoughts on the subject and some PvP Wizard tips.

..if it wasn't that easy to fix the problems of mobs required for Champion's Collection / A Rare Phenomenon / A Unique Collection achievements either not spawning, or not giving credit, then they damn well should have just removed them from the achievement, which would have been an easy fix.

Blizz: "Wahh, wahhh, this is hard work! We can't do fixes that every other game developer can do within a week. Stop complaining, you're hurting our feelings!"

This exactly, typical and keeping with the Blizzard direction, simple, obvious fixes are ignored for 2 years before being addressed...not in the best or easiest way but by removing them altogether and simplifying the game to ignore the problem.

While there may indeed be a list of known issues and bugs that run alongside some patches, for every one you are aware of, there can be dozens or hundreds being worked on behind-the-scenes that you likely never be aware of. We do things just as quickly as we can, but even then, it’s a process that takes time.

OHHHHH right, nice excuse. THERE CAN BE. They never say there ARE hundreds, but in a seemly smart way leave in the air the POSSIBLE reason, without asserting it EVER.

The reality is, game development is a hugely iterative and time-consuming process, with many people involved along the way.

Sorry for the language, but BULLSHIT!!!! Anyone can enter Diablo 3 credits and see there aren't MANY people involved with the troublesome features. There is an entire ARMY involved with superfluos stuff, but the significant stuff is the work of 20 lone rangers.

I'm a recent computer science graduate with a minor in mathematics. I've been involved in a few different upper level software engineering courses which usually involve creating a peice of software from the ground up the way the "big boys" do it in the real world.

It's not an easy process, and what the blue poster said is spot on the money. While their are a lot of "easy" fixes to the game, they are not easy to implement. A lot of different things have to be taken into consideration aside from the actual software engineering work that goes on behind the scenes. Just think about this:

Usually a peice of code needs to be put through unit testing and integration testing just to get an idea of where the software "doesn't perfom as intended". Then once the developers have an idea of where things went wrong, they need to develop a solution. That solution needs to be implemented, documented, tested and reviewed. There is a lot of paperwork and documentation that needs to go on for each step. At any point in the software new errors can be discovered, more previous errors can surface and so on.

It's a process that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Sure its easy to say that throwing in a ladder system and starting everyone fresh would fix everything, and its reasonable to think both things could help but those are not "easy" fixes.

As someone who studied to be a software engineer, I know that they aren't just pissing in the wind here. If you ask my opinion, blizzard made a real mess of diablo 3 and it seems like they are working towards making the game better... it's just not something that is going to happen over night.

Removing ID on Rares. Easy fix. They changed the time before, just change it to zero. No excuses.

Perfect example of ignorance. OK, so they change the variable that defines the time required to ID a rare to zero. That means that you click on it, and zero seconds later it is ID'd. Guess what? That still means you have to click on every single rare to ID them, it's just that there is no progress bar to have to wait for before they are ID'd. Actually, there is still a progress bar, but it moves infinitely fast. And this all assumes that changing that variable to zero doesn't cause Inf or NaN variables elsewhere in the code that then have to be fixed.

Presumably what you actually want is for rares to no longer require identification at all. That requires changing a whole lot more code that one variable, which requires time to code, time to quality test, time to debug if not working properly, time to alpha and beta test, time to fully document and pass on to the CMs who write patch notes, etc., along with many other things I'm certainly overlooking.

And then guess what? At the end of that entire process, some fraction of the community throws a giant hissy fit because identification of items is a core part of the Diablo gameplay, and removing it is clearly ignoring and disrespectful of the history of the franchise.

So many kids bought d3 on mothers money i see. CM are describing every word, but someone just can't understand, that game is not wand creation, but work of army of people, and one programmer can't write some change and toss it into the game.

Blizz: "Wahh, wahhh, this is hard work! We can't do fixes that every other game developer can do within a week. Stop complaining, you're hurting our feelings!"

Sorry, software fixes are a bit more complicated than the fixes you're used to, such as "flip the hamburger so it doesn't burn"

Nice post chelate, it added a lot to the discussion and showed that you are very mature.

@topic
Blizzard already lost a lot of time developing features that never showed up in the game.
- Savage/Sell button on character.
- Rune changes.
- Team Deathmatch mode.
And there are some changes in patch 1.0.7 that should have come out already in a smaller patch.
- Boost of xp on MP
- increase on range of gold/globe pick-up
But they implement fixes for bugs that get midia attraction in a very low time, and always release a patch calling attention to it to try to block attention to other games, like TL2 or PoE.

Thing is, they may be right about the difficulty of these changes but there also are lots of solid reasons to be tired of their excuses:

- It's been eight month since the game is out. Many of those "easy problems" were spotted a month after release or sooner.

- The game has been in developpement for six years. Many of those "easy problems" shouldn't have been here in the first place.

- Those "easy problems" may be hard to fix for some random game devs; but Blizzard have the means, and they should use them since they gave up a bit on the gameplay to make more money in the game's design

- Last but not least: we can't deny they made change. Interesting changes since launch. Lots of changes. But those weren't the most important changes to do. And they f*cked up on pvp. And the next patch in sight still doesn't fix itemisation.

Seriously : legendary overhaul was a bandaid half assed change. It made things worse itemisation wise. Some legendaries are most have bis - others are completely useless and there are too few in the middle.

Parangon lv was bandaid change too: just to give the feel of xp when you're already done leveling and caping MF

The only change I was really impressed with was MP, until I found that MP1 was the most efficient way to farm and that being able to farm MP4 and aiming for higher wasn't really interesting.

I played every Blizzard's game. Every last one of them. And I must say, they have a history of delivering on patches. A major patch in any other blizzard's game I have played was always a game changer and a good reason to come back - If you ever have left the game in the first place.

But also, those were always smart improvements. Following a logic. Each patch paving the way to the next.

But with Diablo 3 it's like they are undoing with one patch what they have done with the other. It doesn't seem smart at all. I can't see the pattern or figure out where the game is going. Legendary best in slots to fix crappy itemisation, just after they said they wouldn't want legendaries to be BIS. Then Bound on account items in a game ruled by an auction house. Crafting that makes all other plans obsolete, but bump up plan drops.

And excuses.

Really, I have a hard time believing it's a Blizzard game. I've never thought Blizzard would ever stoop so low. For my favorite franchise of theirs to boot...

I hope I'm wrong and all of this will make sense in the long run. But I fear they don't have any real plan to fix the game in depth until first xpack.

Sure, I'll agree that seemingly easy fixes aren't always easy. However the amount of work on the game that still has to be done is just testemant to how much the game should not have been released. It's quite disturbing that they their excuse for not fixing things is something along the lines of, "fixes take a long time and we have a lot to do". If they had done the work that should have been done for launch, they wouldn't be struggling with fixes now.

Most posts that i see are "cry-QQ" posts...Seriously people...Ok.The gane had huge problems at the beginning but now most are fixed...Also it seems people had forgot how crappy D2 was before MANy fixes came up and most of em came with an expansion.But i never saw anyone cry back at the time(well the playerbase was lower but more mature).By the way if so many people say that it is "easy" to fix,why dont you go to blizz yourself and fix them eh?
Also,they fix something,people qq's about it.They dont fix something that doesnt need to be fixed,people QQ again......there is no pleasing...so much greed from little kids.....that is all i see

Removing ID on Rares. Easy fix. They changed the time before, just change it to zero. No excuses.

Perfect example of ignorance. OK, so they change the variable that defines the time required to ID a rare to zero. That means that you click on it, and zero seconds later it is ID'd. Guess what? That still means you have to click on every single rare to ID them, it's just that there is no progress bar to have to wait for before they are ID'd. Actually, there is still a progress bar, but it moves infinitely fast. And this all assumes that changing that variable to zero doesn't cause Inf or NaN variables elsewhere in the code that then have to be fixed.

Presumably what you actually want is for rares to no longer require identification at all. That requires changing a whole lot more code that one variable, which requires time to code, time to quality test, time to debug if not working properly, time to alpha and beta test, time to fully document and pass on to the CMs who write patch notes, etc., along with many other things I'm certainly overlooking.

And then guess what? At the end of that entire process, some fraction of the community throws a giant hissy fit because identification of items is a core part of the Diablo gameplay, and removing it is clearly ignoring and disrespectful of the history of the franchise.

Then change the cast time to .01 seconds. I firmly believe the only reason they haven't done anything else is that they refuse to get off their pedestal on how they want us to play the game. They think a mild compromise is a fix.

If they didn't code items to have a simple 0 or 1 flag on if it requires an identification, they've ultimately failed on the backend. If this fix isn't easy, it's the fault of horrifically bad coding.

Most posts that i see are "cry-QQ" posts...Seriously people...Ok.The gane had huge problems at the beginning but now most are fixed...Also it seems people had forgot how crappy D2 was before MANy fixes came up and most of em came with an expansion.

And yet Blizzard has the D2 expansion to learn from their mistakes. Vanilla D2 was better than D1. D2:LoD was better than Vanilla D2. But D3? Worse than all of the others at any point in their existence. They're making all new mistakes because they did things to the series that no one asked for and hasn't improved the quality of the game one bit. They left out so many of the positives LoD brought to the series. This Diablo team chose not to learn from the past.